Quotes that
have changed my life

People say that
what we are all seeking is meaning for life. I think that what we're
really seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life
experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within
our innermost being and reality, so that we can actually feel the
rapture of being alive.- Joseph Campbell.

The mystery
of life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.- Art Van der Leeuw

So the
thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to
cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one's self from
one's surroundings. When that is done successfully, then everything
else follows naturally. Peace of mind produces right values, right
values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions
and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection
for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.- Robert M. Pirsig

Sayings
remain meaningless until they are embodied in habits.- Kahil Gibran

If you want
to be happy, BE.- Leo Tolstoy

As you
walk, you cut open and create that riverbed into which the stream of
your descendants shall enter and flow.- Nikos Kazantzakis

From Layman P'ang

The whole world is the same single community;each and everyone learns there's nothing to do.This is the very place to select a buddha!I return empty-minded, having passed the exam.My doctrine makes no distinction between high and low, rich and poor.It is like the sky, it has room for all. Like water, it washes all alike.

From Walt Whitman:

These are the thoughts of men in all agesand lands, they are not original with me,If they are not yours as much as mine they arenothing or next to nothing.If the do not enclose everything they are next to nothing.If they are not the riddle and the untying of theriddle they are nothing.If they are not just as close as they are distantthey are nothing.

One day Banzan
was walking through a market when he overheard a customer ask a
butcher for the best piece of meat he had. "Every piece in my
shop is the best", the butcher said. Hearing the butcher's
explanation, Banzan became enlightened.

Outside of
Poetry there is no Zen.Outside of Zen,
there is no Poetry.- Ten'in Ryutaku

From Rengetsu

The echo of the bellAt Yoshimizu -I am here too,In a black robeSet against the white mist

Losing an
illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.- Ludwig Borne

We would
rather be ruined than changed.We would rather
die in our dread,Than climb the
cross of the moment,And let our
illusions die.- Author Unknown

The foolish
reject what they see, not what they think.The wise reject
what they think, not what they see.- Huang-Po

When an
ordinary man attains knowledge he is [(becomes)] a sage.When a sage
attains understanding, he is [(becomes)] an ordinary man.- Zen Saying

What I tell
you is not [a] secret.The secret is
in you.- Hui-Neng

Take time
to listen to what is said without words,to obey the law
too subtle to be written,to worship the
unnameable and,to embrace the unformed.- Lao-Tzu

When I
dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep; yes, and when I walk alone in
a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts drift to far-off matters for some
part of the time, for some other part I lead them back again to the
walk, the orchard, to the sweetness of this solitude, to myself.

One day
Son-O nd his disciple, Menzan, were eating melon together. Suddenly
the master said, "Where does all this sweetness come from?".Menzan
swallowed quickly and answered, "It's a product of cause and effect"."But
that's just cold logic!""Then from
where?", Menzan dared ask."From that
very 'where' itself, that's where.".- Zen Mondo

How bright
and transparent the moonlight of wisdom.- Hakuin

What is
your Original Nature, Snowman?- Natsume Soseki

Just as
greed for worldly things is inhibiting and self-defeating,so also craving
for other-wordly things prevents the opening of the mind.- Muso Kokushi

To manage
your mind, know that there is nothingand then
relinquish all attachment to the nothingness.

Master
Kangan pointed to the sea and said to Daichi:"You speak
of mind over matter - then let's see you stop those boats from sailing."Wordlessly, the
young disciple pulled the shoji screen across their view.The Master
smiled and put the shoji back into position. "You had to use
your hands."Silently,
Daichi closed eyes.

The
capacity of the mind is broad and huge, like the vast sky. Do not sit
with a mind fixed on emptiness. If you do, you will fall into a
neutral kind of emptiness. Emptiness includes the sun, moon, stars,
and planets, the great earth, mountains and rivers, all trees and
grasses, bad people and good people, bad things and good things,
heaven and hell; they are all in the midst of emptiness. The
emptiness of human nature is also like this.- Hui-Neng

The mind of
which we are unaware is aware of us.- R.D. Laing

What at
this moment is lacking?- Lin-Chi (Rinzai)

In a
corrupt age, when prayers are not answered, that itself is the answer.- Muso Kokushi

We all want
to be famous people,and the moment
we want tobe something
we are no longer free.- J. Krishnamurti

How many
cares one loses when one decidesnot to be
something
but to be
someone.- Coco Chanel

Can you
walk on water? You have done no better than a straw. Can you fly in
the air? You have done no better than a bluebottle. Conquer your
heart; then you may become somebody.

Practice is
just hearing, just seeing, just feeling. This is what Christians call
the face of God: simply taking in this world as it manifests. We feel
our body; we hear the cars and birds. That's all there is.- Charlotte
Joko Beck

As regards
the quietude of the sage, he is not quiet because quietness is said
to be good. He is quiet because the multitude of things cannot
disturb his quietude. When water is still, one's beard and eyebrows
are reflected in it. A skilled carpenter uses it in a level to obtain
a measurement. If still water is so clear how much more are the
mental faculties!The mind of a
sage is the mirror of heaven and earth in which all things are reflected.- Chuang-Tzu

Ummon said,
"Look! This world is vast and wide. Why do you put on your
priest's robe at the sound of the bell?"- Zen saying

Do not
consciously seek enlightenment.- Muso Kokushi

Meditation
is not a means to an end. It is both the means and the end.- J. Krishnamurti

Meditate on
knowing and not knowing, existing and not existing. Then leave both
aside so that you may be.

At the
point when sleep has not yet come and wakefullness vanishes,being
is revealed.- Shiva

Let us open
our leaves like a flower, and be receptive.- John Keats

Without
leaving the house I know the whole universe.- Lao-Tzu

The eye
with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me.- Meister Exkhart

He who
confronts the paradoxical exposes himself to reality.- Friedrich Durrenmatt

Two mirrors
facing each other. There is no image in between.- Zen Proverb

When a
person is confused, he sees east as west.When he is
enlightened, west itself is east.-Ta-Hui

I can no
longer tell the dream from reality.Into what world
shall I awake, from this bewildering dream?- Akazome Emon

Knock,And He'll open
the door.Vanish,And He'll make
you shine like the sun.Fall,And He'll raise
you to the heavens.Become nothing,And He'll turn
you into everything!- Jelaluddin Rumi

1.Get
enough food to eat, and eat it.2.Find a place
to sleep where it is quiet, and sleep there.3.Reduce
intellectual and emotional noise until you arrive
at the silence of yourself, and listen to it.4.- Richard Brautigan

If you can
spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner,
you have learned how to live.- Lin Yu-T'ang

He who
knows how to shave the razor, will know how to erase the eraser.- Henri Michaux

Every
moment is nothing without end.- Octavio Paz

Talking
about Zen all the time is like looking for fish tracks in a dry riverbed.- Wu-Tzu

We are all
deep in a hell each moment of which is a miracle.- E.M. Cioran

Genuine
beginnings begin within us,even when they
are brought to our attentionby external opportunities.- William Bridges

All Buddhas
and ordinary people are just one mind.This mind is
beyond all measurements, names, oppositions:this very being
is it; as soon as you stir your mind you turn away from it.- Huang-Po

We dance
around in a ring and suppose,But the Secret
sits in the middle and knows.- Robert Frost

The priest
Sung-yuan said, "Why does the enlightened man not stand on his
feet and explain himself?" And he said, "It is not with the
tongue that you speak.- Zen Koan

If you
scramble about in search of inner peace, you will lose your inner
peace. - Lao-Tzu

The purpose
of a fish trap is to catch fish, and when the fish are caught the
trap is forgotten.The purpose of
a rabbit snare is to catch rabbits.When the
rabbits are caught, the snare is forgotten.The purpose of
words is to convey ideas.When the ideas
are grasped, the words are forgotten.Where can I
find a man who has forgotten words?He is the one I
would like to talk to.- Chuang-Tzu

No
umbrella, getting soaked,I'll just use
the rain as my raincoat.- Daito

Between God
and Me there is no "Between".- Meister Eckhart

Wisdom is
not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate
always sounds foolish.- Hermann Hesse

When you
are deluded and full of doubt, even a thousand books of scripture are
not enough.When you have
realized understanding, even one word is too much.- Fen-Yang

Abandoning
things is superior, pursuing things is inferior.- Yen-T'ou

In the end,
everything is a gag.- Charlie Chaplin

I've opened
shop this timeon the banks of
the Kamo.Customers,
sitting idly,Forget host and guest.They drink a
cup of tea,Their long
sleep is over;Awake they realizeThey're the
same as before.- Baisao

If I meet a
hundred-year-old man and I have something to teach him, I will teach;
if I meet an eight-year-old boy and he has something to teach me, I
will learn.- Chao-Chou

Act without
doing; work without effort.- Tao The Ching

Draw
bamboos for ten years, become a bamboo, then forget all about bamboos
when you are drawing.- Georges Duthuit

Stop, stop.
Do not speak. The ultimate truth is not even to think.- Buddha

Zen is the
unsymbolization of the world.R. H. Blyth

Say
something about a thing and already you are off the mark.- Nan-Yueh Huai-Jang

The prayer
of the man is not perfect until he no longer recognizes himself or
the fact that that he is praying.- St. Anthony

Just before
she died, Gertrude Stein asked: "What is the answer?" No
answer came.She laughed and
said: "In that case what is the question?" Then she died.

A monk
asked Yueh-shan, "What does one think of while sitting?""One
thinks of not-thinking", the Master replied."How does
one think of not-thinking?" the monk asked?"Without
thinking", the Master said.

Enlightenment
is not something you achieve. It is the absence of something. All
your life you have been going forward after something, pursuing some
goal. Enlightenment is dropping all that.- Charlotte
Joko Beck

Just as
elephants don't travel on rabbit paths, great enlightenment isn't a
matter of details.Yung-Chia

Among the
great things which are to be found among us, the Being of Nothingness
is the greatest.- Leonard Da Vinci

If your
mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of
your life.- Wu-Men

We accept
graceful fallingOf Mountain
cherry blossoms,But it is much
gharder for usTo fall away
from our ownAttachment to
the world.- Rengetsu

Everything
leads us to believe that there exists a certain point of the
intelligence at which life and death, the real and the imaginary, the
past and the future... cease to be perceived as opposites.- Andre' Breton

TODAY(Word carved on
a stone on John Ruskin's desk)

At any
given moment, I open my eyes and exist.And before
that, during all eternity, what was there? Nothing.- Ugo Betti

Nothing is
more real than nothing.- Samuel Beckett

No one
belongs to me; I belong to no one.There is no
"I" or "mine"; all is blissful aloneless.- The Mahabharata

The Meaning
of Life is to see.-Hui-Neng

I
discovered the secret of the sea in meditation upon the dew drop.Kahil Gibran

In rain
during a dark night, enter that darkness.- Shiva

If
enlightenment is not where you are standing, where will you look?- Zen Saying

Life was to
be a search, or nothing! But it was the fear that it was nothing that
drove me forward. Every encounter was an encounter with myself.John Le Carre'

What lies
behind us and what lies before usare tiny
matters compared to what lies within us.- Oliver
Wendell Holmes

If any man
thinks he slays, and if another thinks he is slain, neither knows the
ways of truth. The Eternal in man cannot kill: the Eternal in man
cannot kill: the Eternal in man cannot die.- Bhagavad Gita

Siddhartha
had often heard all this before, all these numerous voices in the
river, but today they sounded different... They all belonged to each
other: the lament of those who yearn, the laughter of the wise, the
cry of indignation and the groan of dying...and all the voices, all
the goals, all the pleasures, all the good and evil, all of them
together was the world.- Hermann Hesse

When one
see Eternity in things that pass away and Infinity in finite things,then one has
pure knowledge.- Bhagavad Gita

The gaps
are the thing. The gaps are the spirit's one home, the altitudes and
latitudes so dazzingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover
itself like a once-blind man unbound. The gaps are the clefts in the
rock where you cower to see the back parts of God; they are the
fissures between mountains and cells the wind lances through, the icy
narrowing fiords splitting the cliffs of mystery. Go up into the
gaps. If you can find them; they shift and vanish too. Stalk the
gaps. Squeak into a gap in the soil, turn, and unlock - more than a
maple - a universe.Annie Dillard

If you
overlook the Way right before your eyes,how will you
recognize the path beneath your feet?- Shih-T'ou

We are more
curious about the meaning of dreams than about things we see when awake.- Diogenes

If you are
not happy here and now, you never will be.- Taisen Deshimaru

Zen is like
looking for spectacles that are sitting on your nose.- Zen Saying